


no silver bullet

by Ashling



Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Fistfight, Pre-Canon, animal cruelty mention, but like also they'll never get away from each other ever ever!, death penalty mention, there's so much to these two like i just...there's so much, they're in love they are just two very different people at the same time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28049886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: Back home from law school, suit and tie, briefcase too. Tom didn't see it coming.
Relationships: Sonny Corleone/Tom Hagen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Writing Rainbow Silver





	no silver bullet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shrineofstones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shrineofstones/gifts).



Sharp taste in his mouth, sticky slide and sting as he drags the back of his hand against his blood-wet cheek. He is not meant for this work, Tom thinks dazedly. His mind, well-trained by his childhood, is keeping the pain at arm's length, but it's also replaying the fight and showing him all his mistakes. Force of habit. Post-game analysis. Not fast enough, not strong enough. Unprepared. He leans over heavily and yanks at the strap of his satchel; it's half-stuck under an unconscious man. Faint twinge of annoyance when he has to yank harder; another when he realizes he knows the unconscious man but can't put name to his face. This is worse than not fighting well. Names, faces, affiliations are his domain, his responsibility.

Behind him, Sonny is shouting something, exultant—never mind that he heard a crack when one of them elbowed Sonny in the ribs, Sonny will only ever be two things after a fight: exultant or dead. Tom doesn't bother to turn around; the footsteps are running away from them, and even if they weren't, Sonny would have it well-handled. He slings the satchel over his shoulder, hopes no blood got into it, textbooks are so expensive, but he can't fuss over it either. They are in public still. Broad daylight. He must find a phone, this is a message, no guns and broad daylight _means_ something—

He lurches towards the corner store and without either seeing or hearing Sonny, feels him at his back, moving in tandem with him. There is that much, at least. There is always that.

Back room of the store, where they were invited, he slumps into a chair and Sonny paces. The call was brief. The store owner was anxiously accommodating: here, have a seat, let me get you some ice. The chairs are set up around a table where clearly some workers were playing cards. Slow day. The whole place smells of meat; it's faintly nauseating, and Sonny's pacing means something other than exultation, and Tom is too tired for this. _There will come a day,_ he wants to say, but he's too tired for this. If they had run, they could have made it. Tom can put on respectable speed—another childhood relic—and Sonny can do anything. But this is Sonny. Stand and fight always. _There will come a day._ Especially if Tom can't think fast or clever enough to give them even the slightest advantage. It's what he's _for_ —

Sonny says his name, and Tom looks up. Sonny's dark eyes flash, and every line of his face is tense with keeping something in, which is the kind of work he's not meant for. 

"You think too much," Sonny says, roughly, and Tom startles them both by bursting into laughter. It's not long and it's not much, but he can't help it; he's been working on this blank-faced neutrality for years, and he thought law school had perfected it, but Sonny still pierces him. Pinprick to a balloon, as easy as that, and as absurd. And Sonny doesn't understand the laugh, either, but his mouth softens a little, and he slides into a chair. The one next to Tom, not the one across from him. Here it comes, that unbearable inevitable bursting inside Tom's chest, the one thing he can't contain or control.

Sonny doesn't understand, and that's often been the way with them, but their shorthand is nearly as good as telepathy. Tom reaches over and touches the place where Sonny's ribs are probably fractured. Gently, carefully. The white shirt is thin and the undershirt below that is thin too. 

"I was there when they executed Alberti," Tom says, and it's not a non sequitur, and Sonny knows that, which is why Tom doesn't look at him.

He's always known that the law was a weapon only, but he only ever thought it to be one better-suited to the shape of his hands than a gun would be. Something about witnessing an execution made him feel young again; he'd thought he'd run out of firsts. First death, first killing, first torture—at some point he thought there was no horror left for escalation. But the slow cruelty of it, the viciousness of how impersonal it was. The cut of the ties into the man's wrists. The lawyers standing around, one of them looking bored. He would rather die with a bullet in an alley, is the point. There are consequences only Tom can prevent. On some level, this is inaccurate and hyperbolic, and he knows that. On another level, no lawyer working for the family right now knows what he knows about just how many charges could be brought against them. There is nobody to go to for advice; there has always been Vito, before this, but the law is a weapon that requires more study than Vito has ever had time to spare.

And also, Tom knows exactly what it feels like to have a black eye swelling up so badly that you can't see out of it, and that's what's happening to him now, and it's been eight years since the last one, and he doesn't like remembering. Sonny knows that too. Sonny was there for the last black eye. It is both exhausting and soothing to be known as well as this, and he's missed it, buried in his books up late nights while Sonny's off who knows where, half-drunk and flashing his smiles at—

Sonny's hand, big and solid and warm, is on Tom's thigh.

"Poor idiot," Sonny says, and it's half-scoff, half-caress. Of course Sonny doesn't ever think of himself as anywhere close to Alberti, though his crimes are worse than Alberti's were, or at least more numerous. Sonny simply thinks this is like when he caught Tom mourning over a drowned kitten. "He should have taped his gun."

Tom can't explain the extent to which this is completely not about fingerprint evidence, so instead, he takes Sonny's hand in his own. Gentle, again, on account of the scraped knuckles. Sonny squeezes once, hard, and then doesn't let go. His skin is rough and callused.

There's barely enough time to think, with surprising clarity, _He remembers about the board on the left side of the hall by Michael's room,_ before the footsteps of the shop owner come to the door and they both let go. The board in the hall squeaks when you step on it. Sonny wasn't good at being quiet, at first, but Tom taught him, when the Corleones moved into a new house and they got separate rooms. It's time to go now. He won't sleep for waiting, tonight.


End file.
